Making RTI meaningful

Tuesday, 20 October 2015 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

With sporadic efforts to introduce laws ensuring freedom to information under previous regimes ending in flames, Sri Lanka now stands on the brink of introducing crucial laws that may alter the political, economic and media landscape of the nation.

Sri Lanka’s Right to Information (RTI) Act, once only a flight of fancy, is now closer to becoming a reality than it has ever been, with RTI advocates optimistic about it being passed in Parliament soon. The Bill proposes to give the public the right to request information held by all public authorities.

Information Officers, stationed at all public authorities, will be charged with providing information to individuals or organisations upon request while refusal to divulge the information will only be permitted on strict grounds. Even in cases where the information is refused, the public will hold the right to appeal to the Information Commission, which will also be set up.

Furthermore, if this fails, the public could also take their appeals to the Court of Appeal. According to the current draft of the Act, if any provision in the Act is in conflict with any previous law, the RTI Act will prevail.

Currently, the provisions of the RTI Act are being ironed out but advocates hope that it will be put to the Cabinet soon. The need for transparency has never been greater in Sri Lanka but continued discourse and advocacy are needed in ensuring that the Government pulls through on its promises regarding the right to information.

Though public demand for RTI has not been as intense as some would have hoped, the need for such laws has made itself abundantly clear even under the new administration. The reality is that the focus on high-level meetings on RTI and the freedom of information must be directed towards grassroots-level programs through which the public is made aware of their rights and their capacity to act as overseers. This is the only way that the RTI Act would truly be meaningful while activists believe that an accurate gauge of how successful an act such as this is would be is to identify how it is used not by journalists, organisations or politicians but by the general public in everyday situations.

In India, it took decades for the government to pass its RTI Act in parliament. Once it was passed in 2005, it enabled the implementation of freedom of information legislation in India on a national level to provide for the setting out of the practical regime of right to information for citizens. But what made the real change in India, even more than the passing of the Act itself, was the coordinative action taken by civil society to educate the public about the powers they had been vested with through the Act.

Blatant corruption and wastage has sunk its roots deep within Sri Lankan politics, to the point where corruption has become almost procedural, while public resistance has been incapacitated by the lack of supportive laws.

Steps are finally being taken to ensure that those election promises that provided the platform for a new administration are being fulfilled but only the empowerment of the most vulnerable groups of society will prove if its implementation would truly be the harbinger of change we have desperately sought.